I'm not sure what people want from these guys, it just seems part of the 'business' to me, I'm not sure it could be done any other way, it's obviously a complicated 'give and take' set-up between publishers/pr and games review sites/journalists (or what ever they want to call themselves).
In the games industry, I think you are probably right. That said...
I think part of being a games journalist or any journalist for that matter is being able to keep your objectivity even when your being pampered by PR, that is part of an important journalistic 'skill-set' imo and I do trust that there are journo's out there that can keep their objectivity regardless of interpersonal relationships and/or gifts from PR, but obviously there are those that can't, just like in any field there are people that are good/bad at their job.
I strongly disagree with this. Non-games journalists are not expected to keep their objectivity while being pampered by PR, because the mere act of being pampered by PR makes it impossible to remain completely objective. Unless you literally have no memory of what happened (in which case you are amnesiac and probably not a great candidate for journalism of any sort), even the
offer of special treatment due to your status is bound to have an effect on you, whether you accept it or not. The effect might even be negative--how
dare they try to bribe me like this--but there's still an effect on how you perceive whatever the PR person represents that is independent of the actual product (or candidate, or movement, or whatever). As a result, journalists are expected to avoid situations where they might be influenced by PR. There are journalistic standards around, for example, the amount of monetary value a gift from a PR person can have, what a journalist is allowed to expense, and so on--there's a whole code built around avoiding both conflicts of interest, and the appearance of conflicts of interest. A good publisher is expected to "protect" its journalists from having to deal with these things. It may be that that sort of separation is there in games journalism outfits too, and we just aren't seeing it, but this thread certainly hasn't convinced me of that in any way.
Many people on here have complained that journo's have classed 'gaf' as a single entity/voice but I see similar attitudes towards the press tbh, ok, it's an 'industry' but it's an industry full of different people with different ethics and morals and ways of doing things, just because one journo may not accept a 'gift' from a publisher that doesn't mean that everyone should adhere to the same philosophy, or that you should automatically question their integrity for not doing so.
I can definitely see a situation where I am completely okay with a gaming enthusiast website accepting gifts without consequences, simply because they are video games and, like sports, there are no huge consequences for them not being objective. If MVC decided to exclusively devote itself to Square-Enix--covering only its games, doing in-depth interviews and analyses of their products, reviewing and comparing older titles, studying the culture around them, etc.--I can see there being a lot of value in that. I wouldn't trust the numbers on their reviews, but if I was a dedicated SE fan I'd love having a magazine like that around.
Contrast this with a situation where it's absolutely
not okay, and hopefully happening less than it was ten years ago--drug companies throwing elaborate parties and events for doctors under the guise of what are ostensibly "conferences." In theory, doctors are attending these to continue their education and stay up to date with the latest peer-reviewed research; in practice, they are advertised to while being wined and dined in an exotic locale, in hopes that they will select a new drug over a competitor's product when the opportunity arises. In this case, selecting these drugs may not only cost significantly more money to the patient--like, hundreds or thousands of dollars per prescription--it may also endanger the health of the subject.
Obviously, the fact that this situation exists (or existed--like I said, I don't know to what extent this is still going on) is deplorable. Doctors are, by and large, very smart people who have worked very, very hard in a scientific, rational field for many years, while some games journalists don't have any formal training whatsoever. But we sure as hell don't trust our doctors to stay objective under those circumstances. It is simply unfair to members of the games media to hold them to higher moral standards than we do doctors, but that is what people who expect them to remain objective when being ployed with gifts left and right are doing. You guys aren't superhuman, and what you cover isn't a matter of life and death, so when we ask you to write about this story it's not an attack on you as people--we just want to know that you guys are actively thinking about this stuff.
